The foundational mythic story of bluesman Robert Johnson arriving at a crossroads and giving his soul to the devil in return for some devilish guitar licks has spawned many a play. Ngozi Anyanwu’s “Leroy and Lucy,” staged at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre last season, is but one recent example of a genre that includes “Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil,” which I recall being directed by Ron OJ Parson some years ago for the eta Creative Arts Foundation.
And, of course, the themes of Johnson’s famed “Cross Road Blues” (he encouraged the devil story) ricochets around August Wilson’s “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” now on Broadway and soon to be seen at Court Theatre.
But the allegorical stand-in for Johnson, a man named Johnny James, is actually a minor character in York Walker’s “Covenant,” an arresting play from a writer with Chicago ties. In this 95-minute work, taken over by the Goodman after the financially strapped Paramount Theatre in Aurora canceled plans to produce this play under the direction of Malkia Stampley, replacing its stellar Bold series with stand-up comedy, the focus is resolutely on the impoverished rural family of women who fall under this ambitious bluesman’s influence in the rural Georgia of the 1930s.
For one of these women, 24-year-old Avery (Jaeda LaVonne), Johnny is a means of escaping her overbearing mother, played, very scarily, by Anji White — like we’re watching Federico García Lorca’s “The House of Bernarda Alba,” a play that comes to mind here. But knowing this complicated Johnny does not result in an easy life for Avery, nor for her loving little sister Violet (Felicia Oduh), nor for her very close friend Ruthie (Ashli René Funches). The central question of the play is not so much the Faustian one of whether Johnny gave his soul to the devil, although that is one of the show’s questions, but what it’s like being around someone who maybe has, relying on them to solve other problems and not knowing whether your decision-making was sound or catastrophic.
Aside from all of that, plenty for a 95-minute play, Walker also introduces the gothic question of whether or not any of this extra-logical stuff has any basis in fact. His characters are deeply religious and you think at first that Walker is writing about the oppressive nature of the church in the rural South, until he upends that assumption with a bunch of visual scares that put me in mind both of Terry Guest’s similar work in Chicago or maybe even the Broadway-bound “Paranormal Activity.”
Aside from ploughing familiar thematic land, “Covenant” is a tad over-stuffed and inclined to undermine its own rules in its quest to be many things at once and tie things up with a contemporary bow, none of which are mortal sins for a young playwright. Especially given how well Stampley has directed this first Chicago production of a play that originated at the Roundabout Theatre Underground in New York.
Most importantly, Stampley has forged a show here that feels entirely alive and in the moment; her entire cast is at once vulnerable, empathetic, warm-centered (with one inevitable exception) and so immersed in this writer’s vision that you get caught up in the whole thing, worrying about the fate of everyone and even (at least in my case) re-pondering some complicated tensions of spirituality and hokum.
Elsewhere in the theater at Monday’s opening, once the highly entertaining show moves into creepy territory, there were many screams and expressions of shock as doors opened by themselves on designer Ryan Emens’ set of secrets, and we all found ourselves plunged into the darkness of the soul with all of its desires. Certainly, you won’t be bored here, even for an instant. And beyond those moments, you’re for sure in the presence of a writer to watch and feel; I just adjusted that last sentence, realizing I had put down my hand after writing a review of exactly 666 words.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “Covenant” (3.5 stars)
When: Through May 31
Where: Goodman’s Owen Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Tickets: $24-$64 at 312-443-3800 and goodmantheatre.org
